Even though they are the smartest species to ever walk the earth, human beings still don’t know how to avoid making mistakes. This dynamic has been reinforced time and time again throughout our history, with some testimonies even triggering irreparable damage in their wake. Now, when you are going up against such a massive risk, you naturally need a defensive cover, and to our credit, we’ll find one as soon as we bring dedicated regulatory bodies into the fold. The move was a game-changer, considering it instantly concealed a lot of our shortcomings. However, notably enough, technology’s emergence will make sure that they don’t stay hidden for long. You see, alongside all the good things it did, technology also made us more vulnerable by a significant margin, therefore giving certain people a clear-cut chance at exploiting others. This, like you can guess, quickly overwhelmed our regulatory bodies, and as a result, nullified everything we achieved under their stewardship. Fortunately, the regulators will make a strong comeback. Instead of trying to fight technology, though, they are going to make an ally out of it, and by doing so, they’ll come to better understand what’s really wrong with the ingenious creation. The stated knowledge, in turn, will initiate a response, which is now forcing every Big Tech company to right their wrongs. In fact, YouTube’s latest move proves that big time.
In an attempt to crackdown on spammers, YouTube has officially introduced three new policies. According to certain reports, the first policy prohibits all content creators from hiding their subscriber count. The idea here is, of course, to help viewers in differentiating between a legitimate channel and a fake one. Building upon that very pattern, the media giant, in its next new policy, has limited the type and amount of special characters that can be used in a channel’s name. This was inspired by how the spammers use special characters to create a channel name which is a lot similar to the original one. Lastly, YouTube is also putting-together a wider rollout for its enhanced comment moderation system. From now onwards, every content creator can use the “increase strictness” setting that will be available in the “held for review” tab. The new policy framework comes after YouTube witnessed a huge spike in spam accounts this year. These spammers would incessantly reply to other people’s comments with fake giveaways and other scams, thus forcing many big creators to publically address the issue and educate their subscribers about how to stay protected.
As for the new policies, they should help, but mind you, there might be some false positives too.